The Gravitational Pull of Stuff

I had to buy a printer today. I thought I could get by without a printer, but that's not going to work, after all.

Every time I buy a durable good, it weighs me down. It's something I'll have to divest myself of later. And while often I can shrug this off, sometimes it makes me wistful.

Like: I have become fond of my vacuum cleaner.

Is there a tipping point of stuff accumulation that creates a gravitational pull toward geographic inertia? I'm not there yet, but I will confess to having cast about for a U.S. location for next year. Just because of my stuff.  

Like: I am reluctant to leave behind my car again.

As I set up my printer today, I told myself that buying such items is a just a matter of overhead - the cost of living in a place, and not to attach any more meaning onto it than that.

All my stuff three months ago.

Gifts for the Frugal Traveler?

The New York Times' Frugal Traveler posted this list of items he'd like to get for himself.

Sixteen dollars for a travel toothbrush? Frugal?

Obviously, we have a different idea of what's frugal. The only item I thought was practical for me was the Petzl headlight, rechargeable via USB. Everything else was frivolous. 

Here's my list of what to buy a frugal traveler, i.e. me

1. Cash, always in fashion, welcome everywhere, doesn't take up a lot of space, and self-corrects the space it does consume as time goes on
2. Diminutive, but good quality headphones for my mp3 player; I think I've had it with earbuds
3. Amazon gift card I can use for downloading ebooks and music
4. Good quality ear plugs
5. Crossword puzzles book - maybe at the level of NYT's Monday through Wednesdays (they get progressively more difficult as the week goes on)

Here are some other folks' ideas of great travel gifts:

Frommer's - Gifts under $100. The solar cell phone charger is kind of seductive. But at $50, I don't think I'd get enough use out of it, and the vast majority of places I go to there's an outlet I can use. If I'm in my car and I need to charge my phone, I have a converter I bought many years ago prior to the Alaska road trip. One end goes into the lighter port and the other end is a blocky power strip in which I plug my charger.  

Executive Travel's gift suggestions. Are they kidding? Here's one of their ideas (besides the airplane tie): "triple-milled, handcrafted vegetable-oil-based maritime soap." At $19.

Travel and Leisure - Seven travel-size perfumes to throw into a carry-on? I checked to make sure this was for 2012 and not for 1999. Oh, wait. Maybe they're assuming you'd only take one at a time. Doh.

Budget Traveler's list isn't too bad. If only it hadn't made this silly statement:  True lovers of travel don't want to be weighed down with stuff.

Finally, here's a list to do something with, from International Business Times. Some of the items are too expensive for me, but there are budget-priced versions of same, like a portable drive.  And can you ever have too many packing cubes? I think not. I do think a few choices are too personal, the kind of thing I'd prefer to choose for myself, such as a backpack (but see #1 in my list above).  

Overall, I'm surprised at how few of the list items appeal to me.

Alamogordo: Center of the Second-Hand Universe

You're into shopping at thrift stores? Alamogordo is your next vacation destination. Bring a truck.

Despite a population of only 30k, Alamogordo has at least 11 thrift stores, which works out to one thrift store per 2700ish residents. They are:

1. King's Treasure, White Sands Boulevard
2. Bargain Qwest, 818 Hwy 70 West (my favorite)
3. Goodwill, 10th Street
4. Salvation Army, used to be on New York Avenue, but recently moved
5. Zia Thrift Shop, 9th Street
6. Community Connection Thrift Store, 1st Street
7. Father James B. Hay Thrift Store, White Sands Boulevard
8. Habitat for Humanity Restore, 10th Street
9. A 2nd Second Hand Store, White Sands Boulevard
10. Classy Cats Thrift Store, New York Avenue
11. Twice Blest Thrift Store, White Sands Boulevard

The above list doesn't include the thrift stores in nearby Tularosa, Cloudcroft, or Ruidoso. (King's Treasure has a branch in Cloudcroft.)

With a military base nearby, do you think there are many yard sales? You betcha.

In fact, Alamogordo has so many yard sales and similar for-sale-by-owner items, the city has its very own craigslist that isn't craigslist: it's the venerable hollomanyardsales.com, which not only posts yard sales in Alamogordo and on the Holloman Air Force Base, but posts business services, free stuff, lost and found, and things "wanted."

Are you into used books? Here again, Alamogordo is where it's at. Books Revisited has an inventory that changes daily (largely because it receives so many donations and there's not enough space, so every day "new" books get put out to replace those sold), and is located in the White Sands Mall. It's operated by the Alamogordo Public Library Foundation, and staffed by volunteers. Proceeds go to the library. This is a big store with a wifi hotspot, and nice tables out front. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. There's a food court in the mall, too, so you can go buy some books, enjoy lunch, and just hang out and read.

Speaking of the library (on 10th and Oregon) - are you passing through Alamogordo and you've gone through all your books? Walk into the library and you'll see directly ahead of you bookshelves that invite you to swap your finished books for new-to-you books. Free! Apparently there are a few folks who take and don't leave, so don't you be one of those.   

And Even More on Tiny Living

Room at Yeni Hostel, Istanbul

Home, squeezed home: Living in a 200-square-foot space was in yesterday's Washington Post. It also points readers to a good article here: White Paper: The Small Spaces Trend. 

I've visited this topic several times because it calls to me: 

Voluntary Simplicity

 

Tiny Living

 

More on Tiny Living

This year, I happen to be living in a 832-foot apartment in Alamogordo. The space is so luxurious, I can't tell you.

 

But just as satisfying have been much smaller spaces. When I was in Addis, I met an Italian professor, teaching in Addis, who lived in the Taitu Hotel in a spacious room with a balcony. There was a sink in the room, but he had to go out and down the hall for a toilet or shower. I loved that room - just a huge square space with tall windows (if I recall correctly) and lots of light. And the balcony! Wood-plank floor, waist-high wall, overlooking the hotel/hostel's grassy cafe.

My rooms in Dubai and Istanbul - also livable for a long period, albeit tiny.

The trick for making tiny spaces truly livable seems to me to be the accessibility to usable outdoor space, whether that's, literally, a space just outside one's door where one can relax in some comfort (i.e., not in a climate that is too cold for much of the year), or figuratively, with an affordable cafe society or nearby public parks and the like. And certainly there needs to be easy access to food supplies, to eliminate the need for storage space to keep the food. (Or live in a location where it's more economical to order out than to make one's own meals.) 

Some issues I don't see talked about in re: the urban, tiny-living trend: 

People still drink water and generate human waste, regardless of the size of their residences. If tiny urban living really takes off, resulting in a significant increase in the population per foot of a city, what is the net ecological and economic impact? 

Should every metropolitan area encourage tiny housing, if the likely net outcome is increased population, such as cities that already consume too much water for their indigenous climate or rely too heavily on climate-control energy sources? Desert cities such as Phoenix, Tucson, or Las Vegas, for example.   

With a greater concentration of tiny houses in urban environments, shouldn't there be a conversation about built-in green spaces for each tiny-house enclave? Otherwise, when it comes to ecological impacts or quality-of-life points, how would a cluster of tiny houses without green space be much different than slapping up an apartment building? Just a false entitlement to smugness about one's carbon footprint, I think. 

The Volume of Space

Borrowed space  

For the last two years, I lived as a perpetual guest in Missouri and Rustavi, Georgia. I lived in other people's space, among their things. I was very lucky with the beneficence of my hostesses and with the attractiveness of their environs.   





My space

Now, for at least a year, I'm living in my own space again.

And by "space" I mean that in two contexts: 1) my own place; and 2) several rooms that are mostly empty. 

Volume of space

Over time, I'll need to add a few pieces of furniture to my place. A guest bed. A couple of chairs. A table.

But for now, the airy volumes of space, the unobstructed expanse of floor, and the blankness of the ivory walls and ceiling feel soothing. They are a freedom.

I do have color in my line of sight, but it is bound neatly by frames.  My Jim Logan poster. My Pasenko Band poster. The french doors frame the green backyard, through which I often see, in the afternoon, a trio of black cats loiter beneath the tree. 
    

I'm not sure I'm a fan of the late architect, Paul Rudolph's, designs, but this quote about and by Mr. Rudolph resonates, taken from The Paul Rudolph Foundation blog: 

 Paul Rudolph, the Carl Jung of architects, believed that architecture was basically about manipulating space, light, proportion, texture and material to fulfil the psychological needs of the occupants.

Famously, he said, “People, if they think about architecture at all, usually think in terms of materials.

While that’s important, it’s not the thing that determines the psychology of the building. It’s really the compression and release of space, the lighting of that space and the progression of one space to another.”

As I appreciate the beauty of my volumes of space, I can't help but think of a bad example of space design. It's a state office building in Jefferson City, called the Howerton Building. It's a big empty box, for the most part, but its volume of space is merely a warehouse for human capital, not a space that respects humanness. The interior is crammed with cube farms and long, claustrophobic, empty corridors that make you feel like you're on a spaceship. The exterior lacks only coiled barbed wire atop a chain link fence to distinguish it from a prison. When you learn that the "human capital" within is responsible for providing social services, it's even sadder - the enervating physical environment making a challenging job even more difficult.  

Howerton Building, Jefferson City, Missouri

Not sure how I digressed over to the dark side of the volume of space. Maybe because when I have volumes of space that promote feelings such as liberty, serenity, and creativity, it makes me angry about designs that dehumanize a building's inhabitants.

So to get back on a happy note: this rootless person feels good about my airy space - it belongs to me and yet it doesn't weigh me down.

Re-Accumulating Stuff

You wouldn't think buying a colander would be depressing, but it was, a little.

With procuring a new temporary permanent place, I have to re-accumulate some stuff that I shed a couple of years ago. And as I re-accumulate some stuff, I have to be mindful of unloading it again in the future.  I am rootless, after all.

Today, for instance, I bought the colander, a mop, and a toilet brush. Soon, I'll need to buy a skillet lid, but I didn't need it today, so I'm postponing that inevitability.

To add to the angst, I felt torn between buying the cute apple-green colander set - that is perfect for my apartment's decor palette - for $7 versus the super-cheap white one for $2. I fought the same internal battle when I had to buy a cutting board: the one-dollar, milky-white nothing or the sexy green, sassy-shaped number for five bucks. In both cases, my left brain beat out my right, and I made the boring but economical choice.

I tossed about in my mind the utils argument - as in, aren't so many utils of pleasure worth the extra few bucks? Well, no, I argued back, at least not when it comes to kitchenware.  I reminded myself of the law of "lots-of-a-little-adds-up-to-a-lot." So I spend an extra four dollars here and here and here and here ... and before you know it, a month's rent can be expended on transitory cuteness.  

I also toyed with a handsome black-handled, steel mesh strainer, medium or large, and $7 or $10 respectively, before I finally found the serviceable, cheap number I knew had to be somewhere in the store.

Update: In a pinch, tin foil serves as a skillet lid.  
   

Rootless Relocation, Part 11: My New Permanent Temporary Home

Permanent temporary?

It's permanent temporary because I only plan to be here in New Mexico for one year, two years tops. I've taken to telling people that I'm into r-e-a-l-l-y slow travel. Not this slow, but slow.


Moving in

Here's a photo of all of my worldly goods, carried here with me in my car.

All my worldly goods

It took me about ten minutes to move in. No beer, no pizza. I did pop a diet Coke when I finished. Oh, and that's the dining room (or breakfast room, if you prefer).


A permanent temporary home for what remains of my classic, paperback sci fi? 

This great apartment has a beautiful built-in bookcase in the den. Who would have thought there'd be a place for my remaining library of paperback classic sci fi?!  

I'll continue my release-to-the-wild project, but in the meantime, I'm happy they have a comfortable and lovely spot to hang out.

Which brings me to .... 

I'm going to have to accumulate some stuff again.

Like: 

• Bed(s)
• Broom, mop, vacuum cleaner
• Coffee maker
• Bed linens
• At least one table
• Some real chairs (not just the two camp chairs I have)
• Microwave? 

A TV is not in the plan.  

The apartment is so great and I feel that nesting urge to buy cool stuff to make everything "perfect." 

I have a dilemma: How do I balance a desire for a personal environment that gives me sensory pleasure with a desire for practical asceticism?

And what thought process do I want to use when buying more stuff?

• Buy new?
• Buy used? 
• Get from a place such as freecycle? 
• Combination of the above? 

I'm naturally a frugal person, so that's a key driver in which direction I go, but do I also want to espouse any particular philosophy about where I get my stuff? For example, some people only get used stuff. Or only get free stuff. And so on.

Fortunately, Alamogordo has more thrift shops per capita than perhaps any town I've seen, so theoretically, I should be able to find some cool used stuff.

Alamogordo also has an active freecycle presence. (I learned about freecycle from my daughter.)

Until I figure some of this out, I'll be sleeping on the floor. 


Connected

I got connected to the internet the day after I moved in.


 
 

Rootless Relocation, Part 2: What Will I Take With Me?

In Part1a, Part1b, and Part 1c, I figured out where I'm going to live next.

Alamogordo, New Mexico.

I don't have a job there yet. And I don't have a place to live yet, though my current plan is to rent an apartment.

But I've got a pretty good idea what I'm going to take with me. I've got a pretty good idea because I don't have much to take. It will all fit into my 1995 Toyota.  

I'm so glad I kept my camping gear because I'm going to need it.

These are my worldly goods with which I'll set up housekeeping:

• My car
• Two camp chairs with cup holders (yay! I already have furniture!)
• Two sleeping bags
• Blankets
• Some pots/pans from my camp box
• Flatware from camp box
• A few plates and cups from camp box
• Pillow
• Coolers
• Two plastic storage things with drawers
• Shelf stereo
• Clothes
• Clothesline and  clothespins
• Aluminum foil
• Lantern
• Tent
• Two plastic storage bins
• Two bath towels
• A few dishtowels and dish cloths
• Rubbermaid rectangular folding table, approx. 2'x4' (more furniture!)
• Laptop and other electronics 
• Some framed pictures, if there's space in the car

I used to have a stove top espresso maker, but I don't know what happened to it. I'll scrounge for one of those before I go.

Well. I guess that's it.

Anything else I'll need I'll have to pick up in Alamogordo. But whatever the item might be, it'll have to fit my  design aesthetic: Rootless Minimalist. 

How Has My Portable Gear Stacked Up?

When I started my rootless life, a goal was to condense my material life into three pieces of luggage and some change. Toward that end, I bought various items to manage my portable environment.

How have those items stacked up in the past year or so?

Jewelry bag

My original post on this purchase here.

The bag does everything I need it to do. I like the two zippered pockets (one for necklaces and the other for earrings), the ring column, and the bracelet loops. Occasionally, earrings fall out of the holes in the fold-out earring band (see photo above), with the result that they sometimes lay loose in the fold-out area, but I haven't lost any earrings yet, athough the potential for such loss exists. I haven't noticed any signs of wear on the zipper, the fabric, or the vinyl. 

A good purchase and I still recommend it. Available here.

A good flashlight

There are a bajillion flashlights out there, and I did considerable research on which to get.

I also weighed the handheld v. headlamp question, decided on the handheld, thus didn't look at headlamps.

My original post on my flashlight is here.

I still love it. Here's why: 

• It's very sturdy. I've dropped it several times without harming it.
• It's small. 
• Takes only one AA battery. In a pinch, it will also work with a AAA battery. 
• Has multiple settings for different lighting needs. Where I tend to go, electric power gets lost at regular intervals. This flashlight illuminates an entire room. 

When I'm on the road, I have it with me always. Even when I think I'm only going to be away from my base for a couple of hours, back well before dark .... well, things happen and you often have a change in plans while out and about.

I'll say, though, that a mobile phone with a flashlight is a wondrous thing. The next time I buy a phone, it will have a built-in flashlight as a back-up. 

Laptop 

Everyone has a favorite model or brand, so I'm not going to waste anyone's time talking about my particular model.  (Though, for the record, it's an HP Pavilion dm4 1065dx, and I'm very pleased with it.)

For portability purposes, here are the things that were important to me: 

• Case dimensions
• Screen dimensions
• Weight
• Battery life
• Quantity and diversity of ports
• Optical drive (for CDs, DVDs)
• Keyboard size/look/feel

The 14" screen dimension is just right for me, both for portability (as it affects case dimension) and for readability of content. I dislike having to use horizontal scroll bars, and with a 14" screen, I almost never have to do so. It's surprising the difference just one inch makes: I knew the 13" was too small for my needs and the 15" too bulky for my portability desires. 

Dimension and weight-wise, at about 5 pounds, it's easy to heft with one hand when I need to. It doesn't take up much room in my backpack or weigh it down. (On the other hand, the power cord does take up a fair amount of space because it's long - an excellent feature otherwise - and is rather awkward in it's tangle-prone sprawl inside my bag.)

Battery life. When I bought my laptop in late 2010, a four-hour battery was good. And until my battery began its sad decline awhile back, the four-hour charge was more than sufficient for my needs. 

Earlier this year, I helped my sister buy a new laptop, which has an eight-hour battery. I was really surprised how much weight that added to her laptop.

Quantity and diversity of ports. The things I connect to my laptop: Flash drives, internet cables, mp3 player, voice recorder, Kindle, printer cables, SD cards (and if that port goes kaput, a camera cable), mini-speaker, remote mouse thingie, and earbuds. Not to mention my AC plug. I'm also set up to attach a projector. 

Because my laptop is my virtual life, I need all these bells and whistles on my little rig. 

Optical drive. With the ubiquity of flash drives, an optical drive for CD/DVDs is no longer necessary in most cases for data transfer. But there are still occasions when an optical drive is either essential or more effective. For example, if I'm installing a new device (i.e. printer) to my laptop, then I think it's much faster to do so with the manufacturer's CD installer than downloading the installer from the manufacturer's website (assuming I even have access to the internet when/where I need it). As an ESL teacher in Georgia, I received CDs that accompanied textbooks. These included audio files and the teacher's manuals. This information was not available online for download.

Bottom line: The portability criteria I used to select my laptop were useful. 

And insofar as the decision-making goes in regard to laptop v. notebook v. tablet - it's still the best choice for my needs to stick with a laptop. Note: HP calls my laptop a notebook, but come on, really. No, it isn't. It's too big and too heavy to be a notebook.

Little electronics case

I'm still using this Ethiopian Airlines comfort case I received from generous Yoseph. It keeps my tiny electronics paraphernalia secure and well-organized. Not everyone lucks out with just the right bag like I did. So if you're looking to buy one, here are the qualities I most appreciate about my case:

• Small size for maximum portability
• Two zippered pockets within the zippered outer case
• See-through pockets
• Red color to find it quickly in a bag
• Flexibility in expansion - I've since added spare AA and AAA batteries, a Kindle AC adapter, and a two-prong adapter for old-fashioned US outlets for my three-prong laptop cord

Rain poncho

I bought this when I returned to Georgia after my winter break in the U.S. I went with a poncho instead of an umbrella because I wanted:

• Good cover for my backpack or bag, which I always had with me
• More portability than an umbrella

Hmm. What I discovered is that unless it's a moderate-to-heavy rain or I'm out hiking somewhere, the poncho isn't as handy as an umbrella. 

It's a lot easier to manage a wet umbrella upon arrival at a destination than a wet poncho. An umbrella dries faster than a poncho, too, which means I can fold it up a lot sooner than a poncho. Because of these factors, I found myself reluctant to pull out my poncho from my bag during a light rain, whereas if I'd had an umbrella, I wouldn't have hesitated to pull it out and use it. 

So: I'm glad I have the poncho because it has its uses. But I'll be buying a compact umbrella. 

Kindle

I just bought my Kindle, so I haven't road-tested it yet.

Trekking poles

It's too soon to tell for sure, but so far I believe I made a good investment in money and space to buy these walking poles.

There's no better way to screw up a good time than a stupid slip that wreaks havoc on a bone, muscle, tendon, or cartilage. 

In Georgia, there's no snow or ice removal on the pavements. In many parts of the world, the vertical distance between steps are irregular or are higher than is comfortable for shorties like me. And, frequently no side rails. Unmaintained trails that are slick or precipitous from overuse or erosion. 

So I've found it helpful to tuck my compact, collapsible trekking poles into my backpack for day trips or when I'm venturing onto slippery pavement conditions. 

But over the long haul, the jury's still out on the trekking poles' value when weighed against the space they consume (which is very little) in my bags.

Round-up

If I were to summarize the universal variables for the best portable gear, they'd be: 

1. Size
2. Weight
3. Visibility for efficient identification and retrieval
4. Organization for efficient retrieval and security
5. Utility for my unique needs based on how and where I travel or live (for example, another rootless soul might save considerable space and weight with a tablet or notebook if she doesn't have the same data interests I do)

 

Portable: I Am Kindled

An e-reader!

I had resisted getting an e-reader a year or so ago because I already felt tethered by too many electronic "toddlers" I needed to tend:

• Laptop
• Voice recorder
• Mini speaker
• Mp3 player
• Camera(s)

But I was primed for a change when I realized how much mass paper books take up in luggage, in my borrowed room, and in my backpack. And how limited my portable library had to be with paper books.

When I saw TLG colleague, Sandy, pull out her kobo - that slim, featherweight nothing of an item that belied the library it held, I was dazzled by how little space it took up. 

But what nailed it for me was this post by another TLG colleague, Lauren: An Unlikely Companion.

(And then, of course, there's the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy factor involved in having an e-reader.)

Kindle

Once decided, I did my due research on which e-reader I'd get and I decided on a kindle touchless wifi/3G for $139. Could not wait til I got back to Missouri to get it! But I did.

But when I went to order it from Amazon, I made an unanticipated last-minute swerve and bought the basic instead for $79. 

Because: 

• Turns out that the owners of new 3G kindles only have access to Amazon, wikipedia, and one other website. Really? If that's the case, then wifi is sufficient, so why pay more for 3G? 
• I saw that the basic kindle was slightly smaller and weighed less than the newer, fancier kindles.
• I didn't want to have an mp3 player, color, games, or a mini-tablet - I just wanted an e-reader
• If my basic kindle got lost or stolen, it would be less of a financial loss. 
• This review from a guy who had all the kindles helped me look at the basic kindle

So I'm happy with my kindle. Except. I'm a little wistful that maybe there aren't basic maps for my kindle that I can pull up as I sit across a table with some folks in future countries, but maybe I just haven't found them yet. (Update August 3: I bought and downloaded the 2012 World Atlas, which is an e-reader version of the CIA World Factbook. Includes its maps.) 
 
Also, I somehow had the idea that a lot more contemporary books would be available for e-readers via the library than there evidently are. Example: I want to read all of Daniel Woodrell's books, but it seems only Winter's Bone is accessible on kindle from my library.


What's in my portable library so far

• Jack London (all or most of his books!)
• Louisa May Alcott (ditto) (Little Women recommended by Celia)
• Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
• Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi
• Every blessed one of the colored Fairy Books (Red, Blue, Green, etc.) that I loved when I was a child
• Grimm Fairy Tales
• Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
• Bullfinch's Mythology
• Seven of Jane Austen's books (recommended by Rosie)
• Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Some works by Jules Verne
• Some works by H.G. Wells
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (recommended by Rosie)
• Of Human Bondage (recommended by Miles)
• Crime and Punishment (recommended by Miles)
• The Four Feathers by AEW Mason
• Wherever You Go, There You Are
• Two Dr. Doolittle books (recommended by Lindsay)
• Siddhartha (recommended by Sandy)
• ..and perhaps the original Shades of Gray - Fanny Hill, by John Cleland

All but one of the above were free.

Loving the concept of my portable library and the reality of reading books on my little kindle.

Georgia: Stuff I'm Leaving Behind

Getting rid of stuff is still so freeing.

Last weekend, I gave away three of my classic sci-fi paperbacks: 

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Robert Heinlein)
2. The Farthest Star (Frederick Pohl)
3. Rocketship Galileo (Robert Heinlein)

... and a three-ring binder with empty page protectors.

Today I'll finish and release Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Douglas Adams)

By the time I depart from Georgia this summer, I'll have let go:

• Brown suede winter coat
• Two pairs of flannel trousers
• Ziploc bags
• Ziploc containers
• Various school/office supplies
• Some socks
• Two shirts (and maybe two turtlenecks)
• Georgian-English phrase book
• Two pairs of gloves
• Plastic clothes hangers
• A pair of black flats
• Bright pink plastic shower shoes
• A pair of slippers

It feels good just thinking about it.

Cosmetic Clocks

Calendars, climate, and clocks mark the passage of time. So do cosmetics.

There's satisfaction in using up the very last of something. Part of it is the pleasure of frugality - waste not, want not - the other part is knowing you'll be able to open a fresh replacement.

I brought two supplies of cosmetics with me to Georgia. Now I'm down to one. Must be time to leave soon.

Dubai: Gold

Gold in Dubai

My lodging is in the section of Dubai called Deira. It doesn't have the modern high-rises that one sees in the tourist photos. It does have the Gold Souk, Spice Souk, and nearby, the Creek.

View from my alley, looking toward Al Khaleej Road

First order of business today was to walk to the water. When I'd emerged from the metro yesterday, I saw palm trees, blue skies, and the suggestion of water.

Across from the Hyatt Regency is a water-side walkway.

There is a lot of construction going on in the water, moving sand about.

"Flag" juice

Next stop: Breakfast.  Walked up 27th Street (which I think is also called Al Moussal Road or something similar), turned into a cafe. Had a "flag" juice plus a mutton breakfast sandwich. Both tasted fine; nothing special.

After some difficulty, found my way to the Gold Souk, which is a market of small shops devoted to selling gold jewelry. Every day there is the day's market price for gold per gram. Today it was 152 dirham ($41) for 18k, 182 dirham ($50) for 21k, and 186 dirham ($51) for 22k. Add onto that the cost of the craftsmanship, overhead, and other profit. Or maybe the "other profit" is built into the daily gold price. Negotiation is critical.

There's a rather modest entrance gateway to the gold souk, nothing on the scale of the entrance, for instance, to Chinatown in San Francisco, which would seem more fitting, considering the tourist buzz enjoyed by the Gold Souk.  

Gold Souk entrance

I have a pendant that my grandmother gave to me, which belonged to her mother. It has no chain and for years, I've intended to buy a necklace for it so I can wear this heirloom.

I'm in Dubai, so why not get that now? A side benefit: If someone compliments me on my necklace, I can touch it delicately and say with a sheepish smile, "Thank you, I picked it up in Dubai." So next time you see me, be sure to ask, OK? 

(This kind of thing always reminds me of a trip a long, long time ago when a fellow traveler began a story with, "We were picking strawberries in [insert exotic locale here] when ....") 


I visited a number of shops to look at different designs and compare prices. I loved a 22k necklace for its color, liquid design, and heft, and even considered buying it. But then gave myself a reality check. I'm rootless, hello? A constant tourist whose likelihood of being a target for theft is much higher than the average bear. Just another thing I'm going to have to keep track of, like a toddler. And why am I even thinking about spending this kind of money ....


I did, however, buy a more modest chain of a more modest karat. Something more in keeping with my station.

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 2: Gators and Greenville

Alligator Lake, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Leroy Percy State Park

I awakened this morning to a beautiful lake and wood view from my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. (Remember the Percy name for later.) The lake is Alligator Lake, and gators do live here, though this time of year, they're likely snuggled under mud for a long winter nap. Still, the park staff told me that on especially warm and sunny winter days, some gators emerge to enjoy the sunshine.

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

View of Alligator Lake from Cabin 2 screened porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 backyard, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Beautiful, yes?

Alas, the two park trails were too sodden for walking, so off to Greenville I went.

Greenville

Greenville is on the Mississippi Blue Trail ...and the Hot Tamale Trail.

Remember, a week or so ago, Carol and I made an abortive attempt to get us some Delta-style tamales. Today, mission accomplished at Greenville's Hot Tamale Heaven.

Yes, they tasted good. Pretty much like tamales in the Southwest, I think. But I'm not a tamale connoisseur.  

I ate them in the parking lot of the Winterville Mounds, a mildly interesting Indian site from the 1300s-ish.

I climbed atop one of the mounds. Reminded me of the ruins near Tlaxcala that I visited with Kate and Pam. What a walk that was from one set of ruins to the other! The Xochitécatl ruins looked so close!

View of Xochitécatl ruins from the Cacaxtl ruins, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The endless walk.

The long walk from the Cacaxtl ruins to the Xochitecatl pyramids, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

And finally. The view from one of the Xochitécatl pyramids:

View from Xochitecatl pyramid, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The view from the Winterville Mound isn't as dramatic as that from the Xochitécatl pyramid. But it was fun remembering that day in Mexico while I looked out over the green Mississippi flood plain.

Despite my recent epiphany about museums, the 1927 Greenville Flood Museum looked intriguing. The museum is in the carriage house of a former plantation. In fact, this carriage house is believed to be the oldest structure in Greenville (the oldest still surviving, that is). Mike Bostic, the museum docent, screened a PBS documentary about the 1927 Greenville flood, called Fatal Flood, which told a disturbing story about how economics, man's inhumanity against man, and family betrayal factored into the town's flood response. Remember Leroy Percy? He and his son, Will Percy, played a prominent role in the story of the flood. One of the people interviewed in the documentary was John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide: The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America. Apparently, the surviving Percys were livid about Barry's portrayal of them in the book.

Mike and I had a short but interesting conversation about "Southern writers." I didn't know this, but there is evidently so much cachet attached to being a "Southern writer" that there are authors who perhaps exaggerate their Southern ties so they can self-identify as such.  (When will the stalwart Midwesterners get their deserved glory?)


Next I went to the Cypress Preserve, a pretty park with a trail through a virgin stand of cypress. As I walked, I breathed in the pungent fragrance of fallen cypress needles.


 















Getting rid of stuff. It was almost dark when I returned to my cabin. I spent an enjoyable evening decluttering the music list on my laptop and mp3 player, culling songs and musicians I no longer wanted to hear.
For example, I could not abide the no-nuance voice of blueswoman Susan Tedeschi one more day.

And though I love Carolina Chocolate Drops, I have come to despise Trampled Rose, one of the songs on their Genuine Negro Jig album. (I loathe the song so much that I had a story in my head that went like this: One of the Drops guys didn't feel as if he'd gotten his share in the group's limelight, so he complained and complained to the other two about how he'd written this song, and they owed it to him to record the awful thing, and they gave in. I didn't know til today that the damn song is actually an old standby and multiple artists have covered it. For God's sake, why?)

Now gone, all gone. Very satisfying.

Talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops gives me the excuse to play a favorite, Snowden's Jig:

 

... And More Released

Found a nice home for one of my framed pictures. It will soon reside in Brooklyn, NY.

It will share a home with another book I just let go, one of the 10 best books ever written in the history of humankind --> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

42. 

Still Letting Go of Stuff

In the past week, I've released:

• Dress
• Shoes
• Blouse
• Tunnel in the Sky, a Robert Heinlein classic ("Watch out for the stobor.")
• Wheeled, plastic stack of drawers
• Two artisan-made dolls from Peru and Guatemala

Conveniently, I will have emptied these items by the time I leave:

• Bottle of cologne
• Jar of moisturizing cream

I'm scanning a great book, now out of print, that I was loath to give away, but have no physical space for: Mediation and Facilitation Training Manual (Third Edition), by the Mennonite Conciliation Service.

I will leave behind me:

• My car; 
• My camping gear, which I'll store in my car; and 
• Some odds and ends that will fit into one-third of a small closet.

So, not quite at my two-carry-on-bags-and-a-backpack goal, but getting there!

Appreciation Without Regret

 
My sister, mother, and I gathered at my sister-in-law's house.

She bought an old house in a small town. Currently, a weekend place. In future, something more permanent.

Her projects thus far have included painting, weeding and planting, clearing an outbuilding and repurposing it as a "wine barn," constructing a deck, and furnishing the place.















It felt nice to thoroughly appreciate the beauty and comfort of her place, without any regret that I'd released mine.

Too bad I didn't take any photos of her new. So in remembrance, I'll substitute photos of my old.

Tiny Living

Credit: Tumbleweed Tiny House blog

A while back, I talked about Jessica Terrell, a colleague who walked her talk about living simply. She dreamed of one day living in a tiny house like this.

Tumbleweed Tiny Houses has a cool idea - they track Tiny House inhabitants for one year in Living Tiny 365. Here and here are Zoey's stories.













Taking the concept further are pedal-powered tiny houses. I got this link from this very cool blog, This Tiny House, which is about way more than "just" tiny houses. The motto: "Be well, travel light, and give it all away."

 

Stuff Release Continues

Recently released:

• Two jackets (blazers) that I've held on to forever because they're "good." Never mind that they never quite hung right. Donated them.
• Three silver bracelets. I liked them, but rarely wore them. Gave to good friend. Gives her pleasure to wear them; will give me pleasure to see her enjoy them.
• Several books.

Last night, I realized I had become lax about releasing some other odds and ends. Need to get on those. And find homes for the last of my framed work.

Also need to look at my dwindled store of shoes and release more of them.

Last weekend, I went to a family pig roast. I felt very happy that I'd kept my camping gear, into which category I include my two canvas folding chairs.  A small thing, but it pleased me to take those chairs along to the gathering. To still have them. 

More Stuff Released

Door to jewelry stall outside Monument Valley

This weekend, I'm releasing these photos I shot and framed, to sister2:

Outside my door at Adobe Wall Motel, Taos, NM. All rights reserved.

Plus this painting, which I love, bought from Ken Nelson (pictured), owner of the now-defunct Pink Schoolhouse Gallery outside of Taos, NM, in Tres Piedras.

To Carol, I released these photos I shot and framed, taken in the Museo de la Memoria in Tlaxcala, Mexico:

All rights reserved

All rights reserved

Plus some beautiful bird prints to sister2.


This past week, I also released several Tony Hillerman books to the wild.


With the exception of some camping gear and cold-weather clothing, I do believe I'll get all of my earthly goods into the space of two pieces of luggage and a backpack. Not quite there yet, but very close.